1^st lesson free

Jason

Rate $58
Response 1h

$58/h

1^st lesson free

Drums
Percussion
Tabla
Tambour
Xylophone

Make Simple Grooves Feel Better Through Timing, Dynamics, and Cleaner Coordination and Movement

Drums
Percussion
Tabla
Tambour
Xylophone

Lesson location

- online

About Jason

I’m Jason, and I am particularly interested in helping the drummer who already knows enough to play songs but wants to sound more convincing. You may not need twenty more rudiments immediately. You may need to hear why your backbeat disappears, why your hi-hat dominates the groove, or why your kick starts pushing the tempo when the music becomes exciting.

I pay a lot of attention to the relationship between parts of the kit. A groove can technically be correct and still feel uncomfortable because everything is competing for attention. I want you to learn to hear the drums as several voices with different jobs. Once you understand which voice should lead and which should support, even simple beats begin sounding much more intentional.

I also like giving students constraints. Fewer drums. Fewer notes. One dynamic. One subdivision. Restrictions expose control. Once you can make something musical with very little material, adding more becomes much easier.

If what you really want is not to become “the drummer who can play the most,” but the drummer who can sit behind a simple groove and make everybody else feel comfortable playing with it, my approach will make sense to you.

About the lesson

If you can play plenty of beats but still listen back to yourself and think, “Why doesn’t this sound like the recording?”, the answer may have very little to do with learning more notes. One of the first things we can work on is dynamic hierarchy. In many grooves, every part of the kit should not have equal weight. We may deliberately play the snare as the loudest voice, the kick slightly underneath it, and the hi-hat much lighter. Then we reverse the hierarchy so you can hear how dramatically the groove changes. This teaches you to control the balance of the kit instead of hitting everything at one default volume.

For coordination, I like reducing a groove before making it harder. Suppose you are struggling with a pattern involving kick, snare, hi-hat, and ghost notes. We might first remove the hi-hat entirely and make the kick-snare relationship feel solid. Then the hi-hat comes back. Then ghost notes return one at a time. If the groove suddenly becomes unstable after we add one layer, we have identified the layer that actually needs work. You do not need to practice four limbs badly when only one relationship is creating the problem.

We will also work on what I call the subdivision engine. Instead of memorizing a strung-together sequence of hits, you learn to feel the continuous grid underneath the groove. Your hands or voice may quietly count sixteenth notes while only certain parts of that grid are actually played. Once that internal grid is stable, syncopated kicks and offbeat accents stop feeling like random events. You know exactly where they belong because you can feel the spaces between them.

Fills will be treated as part of the groove rather than an opportunity to abandon it. Sometimes I will give you a restriction such as using only the snare and one tom, or only four notes, and ask you to create several different fills from that limited material. This forces you to think about placement, dynamics, and phrasing instead of assuming a better fill means a busier fill. If four notes placed well sound better than sixteen notes rushed into the bar, the four notes win.

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5 h: $290
10 h: $580

free lessons

This first lesson offered with Jason will allow you to get to know each other and clearly specify your needs for your next lessons.

1hrs

online

$58/h

Make Simple Grooves Feel Better Through Timing, Dynamics, and Cleaner Coordination and Movement

Lesson location

About Jason

About the lesson

Rates

Rate

Pack rates

free lessons

online

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Make Simple Grooves Feel Better Through Timing, Dynamics, and Cleaner Coordination and Movement

Lesson location

About Jason

About the lesson

Rates

Rate

Pack rates

free lessons

online

Other tutors in Drums

Poe

Colton

Medya

Rishabh

Harjeet

Adrian

Joshua

Josue

Tom

Matt

Baptiste

Sara

Kulusé

Chris

Sheldon

Isaac

Miguel

Illia

Kelvin

Oisín

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